Jennifer M. Rodriguez said she had a premonition when she was 7 years old that she would be a passenger on a run-away city bus that rammed into a building, but at the time, her grandmother reassured her city buses were safer than getting into a private vehicle.

The 23-year-old Salter College student who grew up in Worcester was on the Worcester Regional Transit Authority bus that barreled through a house at 24 Swanson Road, Auburn, around dinner-time Monday night.

Miraculously, no one was seriously injured in the crash including a mother and her three sons who were inside the home at the time.

Police Chief Andrew J. Sluckis Jr. said that around 5 p.m., the bus was heading west on Swanson Road, toward the Auburn Mall, when it left the road, cut across a yard at the corner of Homestead Avenue and smashed into the house.

Ms. Rodriguez said she wasn't even supposed to be on that bus Monday.

For the past two years, she has taken the bus six times a day Monday through Thursday to go to class in West Boylston and back home to Worcester, she said, but Monday after class, she decided to hop on the bus going to the Auburn Mall.

"I changed my route for that one day to go to the Auburn Mall and honestly, I regret it," she said. "It is funny — I ran up to the bus door and it was already shut and I knocked on it and he opened it. I feel like I should have never been on the bus in the first place."

Late Tuesday evening, she said she felt traumatized and was having flashbacks.

"I'm still shaken up," she said. "It was kind of a long day for me. I wouldn't have ever thought it would have happened. I'm in disbelief and second-guessing if I want to get on the bus again."

When she got on, the bus driver looked impatient, she said, and agitated with people on the bus and was sweating profusely.

She said he was speeding along the route, almost hit three cars and hit several corners.

"The lady next to me asked him why he was in such a rush and he didn't have anything to say," she said.

Just before he hit the house, she said the bus driver was slumped over, then hit a bump and appeared to sit straight up.

"When I seen we were going to hit the house directly, I curled up in a ball and prayed to God I'd be OK," Ms. Rodriguez said. "I prayed for him to protect me."

She said she and the other passengers were all propelled toward the front of the bus and somehow, her shoes had come off.

"We hit the house full-speed ahead," she said. "It felt like we were going 50 miles per hour. I looked at the floor and realized I was still OK and then I looked and saw blood towards my hands and looked up and one of the African ladies was bleeding from her head."

She said her initial reaction was to get off the bus.

"I told the bus driver to open the doors and he said, 'I can't. My legs are pinched,'" she said. "I started to panic and started to kick the doors. I looked to my right and could see a handle on the window and pulled it down, then kicked it as soon as it opened. I just ran for someone to see me; someone to pay attention to me. I couldn't say anything — I just wanted someone to notice me running from the bus."

Shortly after, ambulances and police cruisers showed up, she said.

Ms. Rodriguez said she is swollen and bruised all over, but is grateful she didn't have any broken bones — or worse — and that her 61-year-old disabled grandmother Luz Rodriguez was not on the bus with her Monday.

She said she has a few excused days off from school because of her injuries and will have her grandmother take her to classes for a while.

"Never in a million years would I think a city bus would crash into a house," she said. "I had a dream about it when I was younger and my grandmother told me not to be scared of city buses — that they are safer than cars. To have a dream and then get in an accident like this, I feel a little messed up right now. For most of my life I've been taking the bus and for the first time I'm really fearful of it."

She said her mind keeps turning to the African woman on the bus she was talking to right before the crash and rode in the same ambulance with.

"Every time I sit on the bus I'll have a flashback of that day. It was the longest bus ride of my life," she added.

Contact Paula Owen at powen@telegram.com. Follow her on Twitter @PaulaOwenTG.

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